


The Kids From Yesterday

by LindaLee91



Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Everyone just works through their sad feelings, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Post-Apocalypse, Rated T because there are some mentions of sex, Sad feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:15:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25533463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LindaLee91/pseuds/LindaLee91
Summary: One-shot. Also titled: Everyone pays attention to Klaus for five minutes."He heard screaming before he heard anything else. The constant pressure of it was like a vice grip on his skull. He couldn't hear anything else. Couldn't feel anything else besides thousands and thousands of voices all screaming out at once.Klllauuuuussss!“Klaus!”Well, that's not technically true. He could hear Ben, but Ben was dead too, so it hardly made a difference."
Comments: 6
Kudos: 180





	The Kids From Yesterday

In the end they hadn't made it very far.

When they rematerialized the first thing Five noticed was a sickening sense of Deja Vu.

He was back in the future. Only now it wasn't as much of a _future_ future.

The ruins of the city lay all around them. Somehow they'd managed to materialize into an open spot in the debris of the concert hall, which was lucky. With these time jumps there was always the off chance you might pop up inside of a wall and accidentally entomb yourself.

But that hadn't happened. They were standing where the stage had been only moments before, with piles of wood and brick and ash as far as the eye could see. One of the walls of the hall was still standing and it cast a long shadow over them.

The second thing Five noticed—and this probably should have been the first thing, but the brain (even the brain of a genius) needed time to process-- was that his siblings had not suffered the same fate that he had when he'd time jumped back to the past.

They appeared to all still be adults. Or what passed for adults, as far as they were concerned.

They spent a long moment just looking at each other. Everyone but Vanya, of course, who was still unconscious.

Five was back in the apocalypse. The only man— boy-- whatever-- to watch the world end twice. He was living the nightmare he'd woken up screaming about for years.

What an incredibly strange time to feel relieved.

“Is everyone here?” Five was the first person to speak. His voice echoed through the silence created by the ash fall and felt like it was stirring ghosts that had been dead for thousands of years.

Everyone looked at each other again. Luther did a quick head count.

“Where the hell are we?” Diego, as always, was the first to move. Backing away from the circle of his siblings, he looked at the destruction around them with a mixture of horror and awe. He rested a hand on one of his knives but found that he didn't really know what he would do with it if he drew it.

Luther spoke up. “Is this--?”

“The end of the world.” Five couldn't help but let some bitterness work it's way into his voice. He held his arms out for a moment before quickly dropping them in exhaustion. “Welcome to my hell.”

“It's so quiet.” Diego whistled once, just to hear the sound bounce off of the crumbling stone around them. “I've never heard the city so quiet before.”

“What are you talking about?” Klaus broke the circle next, stepping away and putting his hands over his ears. He turned his back to them. “It's so loud.”

“So, we failed,” Luther interrupted his brother. “The world still ended. Everyone died.”

“Not everyone. We're still here.” Five pointed out.

Luther's brow knit in confusion. He shifted Vanya's weight in his arms. “I mean all of humanity, Five. Everyone else in the entire world is dead.”

“Yeah, well last time I took this little vacation I ended up being completely alone, so you'll forgive me if I'm delighted to have some company.” Five's voice did not sound delighted. It was odd to say something that was almost nice and have it come out angry and mean. But he was very, very angry.

Alison stepped between them and put her hands up, clearly signaling them to stop fighting.

Both of them looked down in shame.

“You got any plan for getting back?” For once Diego wasn't the one causing an argument and he found it oddly refreshing. “Can you use your power again?”

Five blew out a frustrated breath as he watched Luther carefully lay Vanya down on a dusty slab of concrete nearby. “I don't know. Maybe. I'll have to run some calculations.”

“Calculations?” Freed of his burden, Luther stood back up, his arms dangling at his sides. “Can't you just do what you did last time?”

“What, you mean break the laws of physics?” Five snapped.

“Well, that's what got us here, isn't it?”

Five scratched his head. “I can work on figuring out a way to project us back into the past but...” He paused and for the first time in a week—maybe even for the first time ever—he looked to his siblings like a lost little boy. Like a slightly scared child. “But I don't know where to go,” he confessed. “We can't go back to where we were or we'll just die with everyone else. And there's nothing in the future except more wasteland.”

“What about the past then?” Diego asked like it was a simple solution.

“It would have to be before any of us were born. Two versions of us can't exist at the same time in the same place. It might end the universe.”

“Pretty sure the universe already ended.” Diego gestured to the building around them.

“No, not like this. I mean the entire Earth could completely blink out of existence. We could make it fold in on itself like a black hole. We might show up in another dimension with gigantic heads or something.” Five was tired and he was in shock and he wasn't entirely sure that what he was saying was making sense anymore. “We've gotta regroup. Find somewhere to rest.” And he needed to make sure they were really as alone as the others were assuming.

Luther nodded and turned to pick Vanya back up. “Lead the way.”

“Wait.” Before they could start climbing out of the wreckage, Diego put up a hand to stop them. “Where's Klaus?”

Everyone looked to where Klaus had been standing a few moments earlier to see him lying face down on the ash covered ground, his arms splayed out beside him, his feet turned inward. He was unconscious.

Five had a bad feeling that this was only going to be the beginning of their problems.

“Klaus?”

_Kllllaauuuusssss_

He heard screaming before he heard anything else. The constant pressure of it was like a vice grip on his skull. He couldn't hear anything else. Couldn't feel anything else besides thousands and thousands of voices all screaming out at once.

_Klllauuuuussss!_

“Klaus!”

Well, that's not technically true. He could hear Ben, but Ben was dead too, so it hardly made a difference.

He had no idea where he was or when he was, all he knew was pain. There was so much pain in this place. He could feel flames licking his whole body and hear explosions in the distance.

From somewhere far away he felt dirt spraying up on his face. The heat of the earth in the jungle made it feel like getting hit with hot coals. Those explosions couldn't be as close as they sounded.

“What's wrong with him?”

“He's detoxing.”

“Luther--”

“I think it might be more than that.”

“What do you mean?”

_Klauuuusss, please! Help us! Hear us!_

“I think he can hear them. Every living soul that died here when the moon broke apart. I think he can hear all of them in his head.”

From somewhere distant he could feel himself crying. Klaus wasn't sure what to do about that. He'd never been much of a crier but he'd been crying a lot lately. His father had always told him that crying was a 'pointless waste of time.' Alison once told him that she heard Vanya crying a lot at night.

He could hear all of them crying in his head now. He couldn't help them. How was he supposed to help them when he couldn't even help himself?

“Help me get him up. We need to find shelter.”

Klaus felt himself being lifted. He wondered if he was going to keep moving up and eventually drift off into space. There was no moon anymore. His brother used to live on the moon. Klaus had always wondered how he peed in that spacesuit.

He felt himself being dragged along but couldn't summon the strength to move his feet or help in any way. Always a burden. Always weighing the others down.

“No offense but how do you even fight?” He'd pretended to pretend to look offended at the question. One of the old, ugly guys in his rehab therapy sessions had asked it. The man was so thin that Klaus could see the bones of his ribcage poking through his shirt and it made him wonder if he was going to end up like that. If he'd even live long enough to end up like that.

“How dare you!” He'd let outrage fill his voice and pointed an accusatory finger at the man.

A few of the others in the circle had chuckled. He always liked to make people laugh.

“I just mean, like, you can see ghosts right? How does that help the rest of the Academy, really?”

This was shortly after Vanya's book had come out and Klaus was briefly--favorably-- famous again. It had only lasted a few months and only gotten him laid once.

He'd laughed off the junkie's question. “You'd be surprised how quickly your average bank robber backs off when you can bring in their grandma to yell at them.” And then the therapist had made them move on.

But the question had eaten at him for the rest of the night. Maybe it had eaten at him ever since.

What did he actually do for the family? Besides eat pills that he found on the floor and fall asleep in puddles of his own vomit.

Whenever they'd gone on missions he'd always just sort of been _there._ Not really in the way but not really helping either. Occasionally he managed to channel someone that actually could tell them something useful.

He'd once gotten a murder victim to tell them which window her killer had escaped through and Luther was able to capture him practically on his own.

By the next summer he'd been thirteen and had realized that getting high helped keep the voices away. After that he'd never helped at all.

And now he couldn't even walk.

Some part of him was honestly a little surprised that they didn't just leave him on the ground.

They should have just left him on the ground.

When he next woke he wished that he had died. A headache so bad it felt like five-thousand hangovers happening all at once had lodged itself right behind his eyes and his entire body felt like it had been dunked in acid.

Someone was touching his forehead and for a moment he thought it might be Mom before he remembered that she was dead. At least he couldn't hear her.

Klaus dragged his eyes open even though they felt like dry marbles in his skull. Alison was sitting next to him. It was her cool hand on his forehead. She smiled nervously down at him. His eyes fluttered closed again.

“He needs a hit.” That was Diego. At least he could hear them now. The screaming was almost drowned out by the pounding in his head.

“We can't do that.” Luther.

“Jesus, I think he might actually die.”

“Even if we wanted to we can't.” This from Five, who sounded just as bitchy as always. “Where exactly do you intend to find drugs around here?”

He felt Alison take her hand away and felt her shift.

There was a moment of silence where she must have been writing something down on her notepad because Diego spoke again afterward.

“She's right. The city is destroyed but it's still our city. I can make it to a pharmacy and back in twenty minutes.”

“Do we really want to enable him like that?” Luther asked.

“We need him,” Five reminded him.

_For what?_ Was all Klaus could think, but he didn't have the strength to say it aloud. What could they possibly need him for?

“I'm going.” There was a crunch of footsteps. Diego moving away.

“Be careful!” Luther called after him.

“Of what?” Was the baffled response.

Klaus didn't have the strength to open his eyes again but his concentration must have been improving. He could hear Number Five's voice even though it was barely above a whisper.

“Come on, Klaus. We could really use your help.”

Klaus felt himself go under again and hoped that when he died it wouldn't be too disappointing for them.

He couldn't swallow anything. Klaus Hargreeves' swallowing skills were legendary. They were known from the streets of New York to the canals of Venice but mostly in the back alleyways and club bathrooms of his city.

Among other things, he could dry swallow a pill with no problem and with the chronic dry mouth he had gotten from the pill he took before it.

But, in order to exhibit these acclaimed skills, he kinda had to be awake. Or at least partially conscious.

At the moment, he was neither.

He was conscious enough to know that someone –Diego, probably, was trying to give him something but not enough to help with the intake.

“Stop that! You'll choke him. You can't just rub his throat like a cat.” That was probably Luther.

Klaus also liked to be choked but he preferred it to be coming from outside his body.

He was pretty sure they gave up after a few minutes. And that was okay. He was okay with dying. No one knew better than Klaus that death was not always the end. The realization that he wasn't going to have to deal with the pain anymore made him feel light and happy.

He heard Diego growl in frustration and something clanged nearby.

“What about Ben?”

“What about him?”

“Yeah, what about me?” So he was still there. Klaus hadn't heard Ben in hours and he was starting to get worried. If he died. Ben died. For real died, this time.

“Maybe he can do something. Wake him up somehow.” This from Diego.

“Believe me, I've tried,” Ben's response, of course, was ignored.

“It seemed to take a lot out of Klaus to manifest him,” Five said. “If he tried to do that now, he'd die.”

“Well, he's still here isn't he? Even though we can't see him.”

“Uh, yeah. I'm here.”

“Sure,” Five sounded like his patience was fraying once again. “But considering the whole, 'we can't see him' thing that's pretty meaningless.”

“Screw you, too,” Ben's voice had no real malice in it.

“But, if he's in Klaus'es head, maybe he can--” Diego's thought was interrupted by a smacking sound, like flesh on flesh. “Jeez, what Alison?”

There was only silence for a long moment after that. Obviously, Alison had gotten Diego's attention by hitting his arm, a tactic she'd annoyingly picked up since she'd lost her voice. But then she'd alerted him to something and everyone had gone quiet.

To what? More danger? What could be dangerous now that everyone else in the world was dead? Was more of the moon headed toward Earth? He couldn't hear anyone saying anything about it. Maybe they were in shock. Maybe there was nothing else to do.

Or maybe Vanya had woken up and was even now threatening them all with her powers.

But before too long, they spoke again.

“Jesus Christ,” This was said in awe by one of his brothers, but the voice was so quiet that he couldn't tell which one.

“Is he supposed to be doing that?”

“I don't--”

“Has he ever done that before?”

Someone was touching him again, but he couldn't tell who. It was just a hand splayed across his stomach, but the touch was gentle. There was a strange breeze all of the sudden. Like the weather had chosen now to kick up.

“He's...”

“Yeah, we can see it.”

“Should I...?” There was a pause again, and the hand on his stomach put on a little more pressure, but it didn't hurt. It might have been Diego's hand. Diego's hands were always surprisingly warm.

Klaus felt the breeze blow past his bare arms, past his face, through his hair. He felt it intensify as the hand pressed down harder. A moment later his back seemed to press against a hard surface and this sensation made him realize that he hadn't felt that hard surface in the moment before.

“He was floating!”

“Yeah, Luther, we know,” Five snapped.

Ah. Floating. That explained it.

In truth, Klaus had floated approximately four times in his life before that day. 'Approximately,' here being the key word, since there were obviously chunks of his memory here and there that the booze and pills had totally obliterated.

But he remembered four separate occasions.

The first time it happened, he'd been a child.

This was before the drugs, before even the Academy had really taken off. He was six years old and had woken up three feet above his bed one night after having a nightmare about being chased by zombies. The moment he woke, his body crashed back down to his bed, scooting it against the wall and making a loud noise.

Thankfully the only person who'd heard it and come to check on him was Ben and Klaus had lied and said that he'd fallen out of bed in his sleep.

He's been content to continue with that lie but Ben had been so damn intuitive even as a small child that he'd eventually badgered the truth out of him.

So Klaus had told Ben, and they'd taken a spit oath never to talk about it again.

The next time it had happened, Klaus had been a teenager but this was shortly after he'd begun taking drugs and he kind of just assumed that levitation might be one of the side effects of Percocet. What did he know? He'd just found it laying around.

The other two times that he'd done it, he'd floated farther up but he'd been more high, so he'd noticed less.

It was probably one of his powers, he'd figured. Or like, a stress thing. Honestly, he hadn't given it much thought. Sometimes you wake up in a dumpster, five feet above the ground, covered in hollandaise sauce and hey, that was just life.

When you have superpowers, what's one more, really?

But he still hadn't ever told anyone besides Ben so obviously he could see why it might freak people out.

Humans didn't typically levitate. And him having two powers put him ahead of all of his siblings by one, a fact that, okay, maybe he was worried some of them might resent.

Not that it was even a big deal. It wasn't like he could fly. (After he'd told Ben, his brother had convinced him to try and Klaus wound up needing three stitches in his lip and a convincing off-the-cuff explanation for Dad.)

It still didn't help him fight crime. “Stop right there! I'm going to slowly float over to you so that I can handcuff you and turn you over to the police!”

It was still a B-list power. He'd never even worked on developing it. It would only have somehow lead to more pain and voices and screaming and blah, blah, blah.

It was a quirk. Something that happened to him sometimes. Like a clicky jaw or a weird allergic reaction to tomatoes. But he kinda felt bad now that he hadn't told his brothers and sisters. They probably deserved to know. Especially considering this whole manifesting Ben thing.

Oh, yeah, that's right. Three powers. He had two more powers than the rest.

He certainly felt like the most powerful man alive right now, trembling on the cold ground while his siblings took care of him.

“Can I ask you a question? And feel free to say no.”

“Jesus Christ! Klaus? What the hell are you doing here?” Alison was so startled that she put a hand to her chest, the large diamond on her finger glittering tastefully.

“I just said. I have a question.”

Baffled, Alison looked around herself at the flashing cameras, the beautiful celebrities, the red carpet. She lowered her voice and hissed. “This is my premiere.”

“Yeah, I know. That's how I knew where to find you. Duh.”

“For fu--” Alison grabbed his arm, ignoring him tripping over the barricade that was set up for fans and press and pulling him along to a dark corner by the entrance of the theater where they couldn't be overheard. “Why are you here?” She whispered. “How did you even get here?”

“I took a plane. Is that illegal?”

“It's like a seven hour flight. How did you even have the money--?”

“Okay okay, I hitchhiked. Are you happy?” At least he'd dressed for the occasion. It just wasn't the occasion that they were currently at. It looked more like he'd dressed for a clown bar mitzvah. He was wearing some type of frilly, light pink shirt with the same black leather pants that she remembered him buying as a teenager and then never washing.

He didn't smell, what you would call, great.

She hadn't seen him in five years. She'd left the house at seventeen and truthfully hadn't thought as much about leaving Klaus and the others behind as she had Luther. She had found herself worrying about where Klaus had ended up but she'd long ago come to the realization that there was little she could do to help him if he wasn't willing to help himself.

Now he was here. In L.A. At her movie premiere. Reminding people that she was a freak.

His eyes were so bloodshot they looked like candy canes.

“What do you want?” Her voice was firm.

Klaus pressed his hands together like he was coming to a point. “Here's the thing, Sis. A lot of my capital has been tied up in what you would call...” he made some pinching gestures with his hands, like he was physically reaching for the right word. She assumed he thought it looked elegant and aristocratic. “...some bad investments.”

“Investments?”

“Yes, I was, shall we say, led astray by my money manager.”

“Klaus.”

“My money manager is the toilet bowl of the YMCA that I taped my wallet to. I thought that would hide it! That's what they do in the movies.” His voice was pleading.

Alison scoffed. “So, you got robbed? And then, what, you came across the country to tell me about it?”

“It wasn't just that. I spent the rest.”

“On drugs.”

His dark brows furrowed in offense but his voice was still whiny. “Not just that. Also food. And an iPod. And a bunch of those fake plastic chickens for a thing I was working on. And this weird little metal ring your supposed to put around your di--”

When he pointed down at his crotch she slapped at his hands and made a noise of disgust. “Ew! Stop! Why do you always have to veer into gross territory? I feel like I know more about your...” she gestured vaguely to his crotch. “...situation down there then I do my own fiancee.”

“Oh yeah. Congrats on that by the way.” He smacked her shoulder in a friendly way that made her stumble onto the hem of the fifteen-thousand dollar Vera Wang that she was wearing. “I'm sorry I didn't call about that. I was in the hospital for a little while.”

“Because of drugs.”   
“Actually, no. That one was because of the cock ring.” He was delighted to inform her.

“Klaus, I am not giving you money.”

“Oh come on! What's the point of being a celebrity if you don't have a shameful family member to pay off? I can be your Billy Carter. Your Rosemary Kennedy. You can put me up in some quiet, beach side villa in Martha's Vineyard with a bunch of elderly dogs and hope that the press never uncover my existence.”

“Are you planning on blackmailing me?”

He'd been sarcastic and jokey a moment before, but his face suddenly went serious. His mouth opening a little, his arms falling by his sides. “No, Alison, I wouldn't do that.” The hurt was evident in his voice and the sting of guilt reminded Alison of home more than anything else.

None of them liked hurting Klaus'es feelings. It didn't happen often—God knew there were whole years where it seemed like he didn't even have feelings-- but when it did it felt like a punch in the gut. When those bright, green eyes of his misted up it made you feel like you'd kicked a puppy.

“I know you wouldn't.” And now she was the one apologizing. How did he _do_ that? “But you can't be here right now. If the photographers see you....look, Klaus, I feel like I've finally managed to put the Academy behind me.”

“How?” That one word was coated in so much vulnerability that it tore at Alison's heart. He wasn't asking for money anymore. This was worse. How had she done it? How had she put a lifetime of pain and neglect and anger behind her? Considering the fact that she was lying, she wasn't sure that she could answer that question. She still woke up some nights scraping, trying to get the electrodes off of her skin. She hadn't wanted to explain that to Patrick.

“Klaus--”

“No, you're right.” He wasn't looking in her eyes anymore. His eyes were cast down at the ground. He ran a hand through his dark hair, ruffling it so that it stood up at odd angles. “You're right, Alison. I'm really sorry. I shouldn't have come here.” He started to back away. “That's a pretty dress.”

“Thank you.” She wanted to say something else. To beg him to stay. To get him some help. To offer him some money after all. Enough to get a meal or to buy a plane ticket back home. She wondered, as she always wondered, if this would be the last time she'd ever see him alive. If she was going to get a phone call from Luther and have to fly across the country to attend the funeral.

Or worse, hear it on the news. Another Academy kid dead. What a terrible waste.

He'd started slumping when he walked when he was fourteen and had suddenly outgrown all the rest of them in a year. Now she could tell by that posture where he was in the crowd and watched his shoulders as he disappeared from her life once again.

There were things that you got over in life and things that you didn't.

When he was a kid, Diego had had a stutter. And it wasn't like he was stupid, or like he didn't know how to talk. Despite Dad's offhand comments about it, Diego wasn't defective. He knew how to talk, he just couldn't always get the words to come out.

It was like reaching for something that was just out of his grasp. The cold realization when he knew the word wasn't going to come out no matter how hard he tried. Until Mom had told him to start picturing the word in his mind, until she'd helped him through it, he'd thought he would spend the rest of his life stuttering.

But he didn't. He got past that.

When he was little, he'd also had a fear of water. Once, when they had all been having swimming lessons, Deigo had gone under just a little too long. The feeling of the cold water closing around him, of slowly drifting away from the light and looking up to see his siblings kicking above him, had haunted him for a long time.

Somehow—to this day he wasn't sure how-- he managed to survive that. Someone had pulled him out. Probably Luther. Maybe Dad. Having a dead kid on your hands was awfully hard to explain to the police.

It didn't matter. He'd gotten back in the next day even though he was still terrified. And the next day, and the next, until eventually he'd conquered his fear and learned to swim.

There were things that you got over and things that you didn't.

Every single time a call came over the radio about a dead junkie, Diego got that same feeling that he'd had when the water was closing over him.

He couldn't count—actually, he could, but he didn't want to—the amount of times that he'd raced to a crime scene with a sick feeling of dread in his stomach, speeding through traffic, treating stop lights like they were suggestions, only to get there to find an old man or a young woman or an _anyone else_.

Not Klaus. It wasn't his brother, he'd tell himself. This time.

He didn't always think of his family.

He'd left the house in a haze of rage and shouted words and shame and he'd never looked back. He'd found a place of his own—something he was proud of, despite it being an absolute shithole-- and he'd gone into the police academy and been thrown out of the police academy all on his own.

He didn't need his family but he still cared about them, he could admit that.

He'd been a little proud the first time he'd seen Alison on a movie poster on the street outside the theater. He'd sometimes regretted ignoring Vanya the way they had.

Okay, he'd always regretted it up until she published her little book and made him realize that she'd hated all of them the whole time.

He only found himself missing Luther when he needed a jar opened or something. He couldn't really imagine anyone seriously missing Luther.

But he didn't need them. And he didn't think of them. Except when a call came through and he thought it was Klaus. Except then.

Luther had missed all of them. Every single one. He hadn't expected this. During all of the joint birthday parties and Christmases and training sessions and when they went out on missions together, he'd never expected to grow up to be completely alone.

His family had always had his back. He'd taken point and the others had always been right there to back him up. It made him feel safe. When he went out on missions alone he didn't feel safe.

When he'd first woken up after his surgery, he'd cursed everyone and everything around him. He'd hated his siblings for not being there to help him. He'd hated Pogo and Mom for not stopping the transformation. He'd even hated Dad for choosing this for him, even though later he realized that the old man had only had his best interests at heart.

But secretly, for years, he'd blamed his siblings most for leaving.

Until he got to the moon and the perspective made him realize how little concerns like that mattered.

It made him realize how small everything was. And not just small in the sense that everything was small when you had a giant body, but small as in 'little blue marble' small.

The solitude had given him time to think, and it had made him miss everyone.

He missed Alison most, of course, and he wondered what she was up to, although he was also secretly glad to not have to see how happy she was with her new husband and her career.

He missed Klaus, because Klaus was always funny.

He missed Vanya but, when he thought about why he missed her, he couldn't really come up with a good reason. Not that you had to have a reason to miss someone, of course.

He even missed Diego, if only for the challenge that his brother provided him. He was a good sparring partner. Maybe the only one that could match him strike for strike.

Mostly, he missed talking to all of them. He missed the late night sleepovers when they'd all sneak out of their rooms to go up to the roof and look at the stars. Mom would pretend to scold them but bring them all hot chocolate and dig their sleeping bags out of the closet by the stairs and carefully comb out Vanya and Alison's hair before wrapping a scarf around Alison's.

And she'd leave them up there and pretend not to know where they were when Dad asked.

They had stopped having sleepovers when they were preteens. He wondered why.

It was quiet on the moon. It made him wish for conversation.

When Ben had died his last thoughts had been about his family.

Actually, no, that wasn't true. His last thoughts had been something like, “Ow! Oh wow, holy shit that really hurts! Am I dying?”

But after that it was about his family.

Specifically, Klaus who he'd always considered his best friend. And specifically because shortly after he felt himself pass out of his body (or maybe it was a while after. Time was hard to keep track of when you were dead, to be honest) he'd found himself standing in Klaus'es bedroom.

Because he was young and stupid—he liked to think he'd grown since then, even if he hadn't literally physically grown in any way-- he'd hysterically assumed that it was like a video game. Like he'd had another life and had just returned to his most recent checkpoint.

He hadn't been in Klaus'es bedroom when he died. He'd been out with the team. But here he was and he felt fine. He felt normal.

It wasn't until Klaus himself had entered the room, taken one look at him and done a double-take before slamming the door behind him that he'd realized his mistake.

Klaus could see the dead. He was dead.

“Ben?” It was the first voice that he had heard since the world had gone black. Since the pain and the ripping and the blood filling his mouth. “Is that you?”

Ben looked down at himself. There was no longer a giant hole in his chest. So that was probably good.

“I think so. What happened to me?”

“You tell me!” For some reason, Klaus was whispering, like he was worrying about being overheard. “It's been three days! Oh my God. Wait. How can I even see you right now? I'm on so much speed that every time I close my eyes I see centipedes.” Flinging himself at his dresser, he picked up a small orange bottle and looked over it with his brow furrowed. “These things must be defective.”

“Good that you found a way to make this about you,” Ben commented, dryly.

Klaus breathed an apology and sat down on his bed. “How are you? You'll forgive me for pointing out you don't seem as...” he made a knife stabbing gesture toward his stomach. “..scary as most of the ghosts I see.”

“I feel fine. I think. So, I'm really dead?”

Klaus lifted a shoulder. It was a carefree movement but his eyes were shadowed with sorrow. “I'm sorry, Ben. I wish I could've....”

He let the sentence hang in the air for a long moment before, ever the optimist despite being what most doctors would probably term 'clinically depressed,' Klaus sprung to his feet again. “Hey, maybe this is a good thing! We can spend lots more time together now! We can travel the world. You ever thought about going to France? Hey, getting it on with those chic French girls. I mean, they can't see you but, that could be fun too!”

But they hadn't traveled the world. Because Klaus never had any money and Ben was, ya know, dead.

They hadn't gotten far, in fact. They'd never made it out of the city. And Klaus had spent the next six years almost killing himself over and over again in drug dens and trap houses with needles sticking out of his arm and fresh vomit all over his shirt.

Ben had wondered what would happen to him if Klaus actually died. And, more importantly, what would happen to Klaus. He didn't like to think about it.

It wasn't unusual for Klaus to awaken having no idea where he was. In fact, it had become a regular occurrence for him to the point that he'd stopped even trying to figure out where he was or what day it was and went straight to where he could get a decent cup of coffee or a cigarette at this time of whatever.

And, truthfully, he'd woken up in worse places than the apocalypse. Indiana, for instance.

But never—never in his entire life or whatever life he might have lived before this—had he ever woken to find everyone that he loved looking at him with concern.

For a moment he was genuinely worried that he'd done something bad. Maybe fallen asleep stark naked in a public place. Again.

The impulse to feel his chest to make sure that he was wearing a shirt struck him, but he didn't appear to be able to move his arms.

That simple fact, the fact that he couldn't seem to move his arms or his body, reminded him of what had happened, brought the shrieking, bleeding, crushing, gnawing reality of it back into focus.

The world had ended. He was in the apocalypse. _They_ were in the apocalypse, him and his brothers and sisters.

Everything was gone. People, trees, buildings, disco music, hot guys, hot girls, egg sandwiches, The Christmas lights they used to string up around the city every year, Christmas in general, probably Halloween also.

He was dead. Except, not really. Only kind of.

Dave. Dave was gone. But he had already been gone. But whatever was left of him, whatever was left in that hot, muddy jungle or whatever they'd managed to scrape up and send back to his family, was now gone.

He could still feel his dogtags hot against the flesh of his neck. He couldn't even die right.

“Klaus? Are you awake?” Luther asked, tentatively.

“Of course he's awake, his eyes are open.” Five this time.

Alison held up a hand to get them to shut up. She smiled at him, her closed-mouth smile.

She didn't seem to be in any pain. He was in pain. And he hadn't even gotten his throat cut.

Although, when he opened his mouth to talk he almost thought for a second that it had been.

He coughed a few times, clearing some weird phlegm from the back of his throat and probably several layers of smoke from his lungs.

This, of course, went on for several minutes, as there was a lot to get up.

After he was done, his voice did not sound like the dulcet tones that he was used to and instead had become more of a strangled croak but he still asked: “What's up, bitches?” in the his usual manner.

If he wasn't mistaken, every one of his onlooking siblings seemed to breath a sigh of relief.

“What happened to you? Why did you pass out?” Luther demanded.

Diego held up a hand to silence him in an almost passive gesture. It was as if he was saying 'give him a minute.'

But Klaus didn't think a minute was going to bring him into a much fitter state, so he barreled right ahead. “Sorry about that. Had to take a little nap. What'd I miss?”

He still sounded terrible and he still couldn't move. But he hoped that they wouldn't notice that.

“You were asleep for three days,” Diego told him.

“Is that all?” Now that he noticed, they did appear to look different. Five and Alison had changed their clothes into something more practical, he figured. Five probably going off his past apocalyptic experience there. Alison had put on a long trench coat that was too big in the shoulders and in a deep brown that did not suit her, but he didn't think now was the time to remind her that she was more of a summer than an autumn.

Five had also donned a coat and some jeans. Everyone appeared to have that strategically dirt-smeared, Mad Max look. The kind that made it clear you were a good-looking, heroic lead. He hoped that he had it too.

“Klaus,” Luther spoke up again. “What did you see? When we got here, what made you pass out?”

Klaus was relieved to note that he could roll his eyes now and infinitesimally move one shoulder to denote his carefree, easy-going attitude.

“Oh, just the screaming voices of billions of dead shouting in my head all at once. The usual. Wait...” His eyes sprung open—and it was good to see that he could still spring things--- and now he could move his head, too, looking back and forth. “Why can't I hear anything now?”

“Probably has something to do with the handful of narcotics I crammed down your throat,” Diego admitted in a voice that may have been slightly regretful despite the favorable outcome.

Klaus did something that might have been a laugh or a cough. “What did you give me?”

Diego looked around himself at the ground, they'd made a camp of some kind, clearly, based off of the sleeping bags and burning fire pit. Finding a little orange bottle, he raised it and looked at the label.

“Amlodipine.”

“That's....a blood pressure medicine.”

“Well, it worked, didn't it?” Diego tossed the bottle back down.

Klaus considered this. “Now that you mention it my blood does feel pretty controlled.”

“Guys!” Five spoke up. “We don't have time for this.” As far as he was concerned, they never had time for anything.

Klaus kinda figured that had all the time in the world, now.

“If you're done having your little extended nap time,” Five's voice was still spiteful but he thought—maybe hoped—that there was a little bit of fondness there too. “We need you to--”

_To conjure Ben._

_To conjure dad._

_To conjure George Washington and have him tell us how to start a new country._

He couldn't do any of that. The most he could probably do was stand and that would take some help.

“--well, actually, _we_ need to all work together. I have a plan.”

Oh. Well that was unexpected. Not Five having a plan, of course. Klaus had assumed that would be the case. But the idea that they had to all work together. They hadn't all worked together since they were kids.

“You have a plan?” Luther's voice was accusatory. “And you're just bringing that up now?”

“Hey, hey, hey, no fighting, children,” Klaus tsked. “At least not until I can feel my legs.” He was having some advancements in moving his arms, though.

“I have no idea if it's gonna work,” Five admitted when everyone turned to him.

“You said that about coming here,” Diego reminded him.

“Yeah, and look how that worked out.” His young voice sounded almost self-deprecating. “But if I can bring us back to before this...before...all of this.” He gestured widely at the destruction around them. “We might be able to stop it.”

Luther, Diego and Alison all looked at each other. Klaus rubbed his eyes until they hurt. It felt nice to feel anything.

“How far back?” Luther asked.

“That's the thing. I'm not sure.” Five gave them all a grim look. “If I take us back, it would be uncontrolled. We could land anywhere...again. It might be twenty minutes and it might be, I don't know, two decades.”

Everyone looked at each other a bit nervously. Klaus wasn't totally invested in the conversation, but he figured he'd go along with whatever they wanted to do.

“Or, we could just stay here.” Five shrugged. “Maybe you'll all look good with long scraggly beards.”

Oh, absolutely not. Klaus had no intention of growing a long beard. Out of the question.

Of course, he couldn't vocalize a thought that profound yet, so all he did was shout, “No!” which made everyone look at him.

He could just manage to push himself up on his elbows now. “My vote. Past.” He grunted from the effort.

The others all looked at each other. Now that Klaus had elevated himself a little he could see their positions better. Alison was sitting closest to him, with Diego sitting next to her and Luther and Five standing a few feet away. Vanya, also still unconscious, was laying by the fire. He wondered if they'd tried to give her blood pressure medicine.

If they were voting—and they were, they always kinda did—they all seemed to come to a unanimous conclusion. It was the past or staying here. The past or another forty or fifty years in the desolate wasteland with everyone and everything you love destroyed. The past or beards. Maybe even for Alison. And again, she was a definite summer.

So, they waited until he could stand again. It only took another twenty minutes or so, he was recovering more quickly than anyone had expected.

They still didn't have Vanya, but even if she woke up they might not have her.

Once he felt like he could stand, Diego helped him to his feet without a word.

They all stood in a circle and joined hands again and he felt—actually felt—the slight pressure of Ben's hand on his shoulder.

“Okay, everyone ready?” Five asked.

“Wait,” Klaus had to know. “Why did you wait till I woke up? Why didn't you just carry me like...?” Instead of finishing the sentence he nodded to Vanya, still asleep in Luther's arms.

“Because we need you,” Five snapped.

Klaus frowned. “For what? You're the one using your powers. We're all--”

“Klaus, we need you. Now shut your mouth and hold on.” Five had such a way with the tender expressions.

Despite himself, Klaus actually did feel heartwarmed.

_Klaus, we need you._ Had not been a statement he'd ever heard before. Mostly it was more like _Klaus, get out of here._ Or _Klaus, shut up._

Being needed was something he thought he could get used to. If they survived this time jump, that is.

He held on, between Diego and Alison, closed his eyes and felt the breeze rush past him again. The past rushing forward to meet them all.


End file.
